This is the one feature you should demand in a cooling bed
Honestly, is there anything more frustrating than tossing and turning trying to find the cool spots on bedding? I think not. So, how can you cool your bed down without any fuss? By investing in the best mattress that does the job for you.
From the Eight Sleep Pod 4 to the Brooklyn Bedding CopperFlex Pro, I’ve tested many of the best cooling mattresses you can buy online this year. Fancy tech aside, the coolest beds I’ve slept on all have one thing in common. And it’s not polymer gels or metal infusions, it’s a humble coil layer.
Naturally breathable, hybrid mattresses are in fact some of the coolest mattresses around. Yes, the additional cooling tech (we’re talking Phase Change Materials (PCM), GlacioTex, copper-infused foams and the like) can bolster the bed’s cooling power. But by simply picking a hybrid over an all-foam mattress in upcoming Labor Day mattress sales, you’re sure to get cooler sleep.
What is a hybrid mattress?
A hybrid mattress is one made with layers of both pocket coils (which you may hear described as springs) and foams. Marrying the support of coils with the contouring and comfort of foam (be that traditional memory foam, latex or gel foam), it provides a balance of firmness and cushioning.
How does a hybrid mattress keep you cool
Think airflow, ease of movement and double the cooling power, here’s why hybrid mattresses are the coolest mattresses my team and I have tested…
Coils allow more airflow
At the core of hybrid mattresses, you’ll find a layer built of coils. There are four main types of mattress coils, but most of the best hybrids we’ve tested have pocket coils, which are great for airflow.
Thanks to air channels between the individually-wrapped coils in pocket coils, air can pass through the mattress, preventing heat from getting trapped. Your body naturally produces heat through the night and without this airflow to help it dissipate, you can overheat.
The surface is more responsive
Due to their coil layers, hybrid mattresses are generally more responsive and bouncy. This means that it is easy to move between different sleep positions on the mattresses surface without feeling stuck in the ‘hug’ of comfort foams (by contrast, you tend to sink into the dense foams in memory foam mattresses) or getting into a sweaty fluster.
While some sleepers (mainly lightweight side sleepers) find the hugging sensation from memory foam comforting, other people find it stifling. Combination sleepers who move more throughout the night would especially benefit from the responsive support offered by a hybrid mattress.
They feature cooling foams and covers
Many hybrid mattresses include comfort layers made of gel-infused foam, open-cell memory foam and copper-infused foam or latex. Though they work in different ways, these materials are all geared towards improving temperature regulation.
Cooling gel beads or particles incorporated within mattress foams help to absorb and dissipate body heat. Perforated open-cell foams improve breathability. While copper foams — for example, those found in the aforementioned Brooklyn Bedding CopperFlex Pro Hybrid mattress — help conduct heat away from the body. Typically copper is added to mattresses by methods such as infusing a layer of foam with it, or by adding copper filaments to textile fibers by weaving them in.
What’s more, hybrid mattresses often feature breathable covers made of materials that help absorb moisture and promote a cool-to-the-touch sleep surface. These covers can be made from naturally breathable materials like cotton and wool (which is also moisture-wicking), or even synthetic cooling fibers like GlacioTex, which features high thermal conductivity fibers that draw heat from your body, and remains cool-to-touch, or Phase Change Materials, which absorb and release heat energy as the particles they’re made of change from solid to liquid.
Top-rated hybrid beds like the Helix Midnight Luxe mattress come with the option to upgrade with a GlacioTex cover. The manufacturers promise this upgrade provides a cooler sleep experience and our testers suggested it might be worth the additional spend if you do sleep hot.
While many of these cooling materials can be found in the best memory foam mattresses too, they tend to perform better in conjunction with airy coil layers. Essentially, hybrid mattresses can offer better cooling throughout the whole mattress structure rather than in just the top layers.
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